


Back Again

by JCapasso



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:47:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27667715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JCapasso/pseuds/JCapasso
Summary: After seeing the alternate Haven where the troubles never existed, Audrey gets an insane idea and takes it to Duke who, rather than talk her out of it, helps her refine it. Then they just have to find Stuart Mosely and convince him to help.
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Audrey Parker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

Audrey had what she was sure was the stupidest idea she’d ever had, but she still couldn’t get it out of her head, which was what brought her to the Rouge. She knew that she would never be able to take any of Nathan’s criticisms seriously. Nathan wasn’t very good at thinking outside the box and she knew that so it was clear that he would dismiss it out of hand. Duke, on the other hand, was a lot better at such things and even if he thought it was stupid, he would at least give it due consideration. He would either help her refine her idea or convince her of why it was ridiculous. Not to mention, if she did end up going through with it, he would be the one she would need help from. 

When she stepped out of her apartment and looked out towards the Rouge, she noticed that Duke was working on the deck, moving some boxes around and she was sure that she didn’t want to know what was in them and there was a good chance that even /he/ didn’t know what was in them. Still, he was there and apparently wasn’t /too/ busy, so she headed down to talk. When he noticed her, he offered her a drink and she waited until they were sitting before she said, “So, I have this really insane idea…”

“If you’re hoping for me to talk you out of it, I’m not sure you came to the right place,” he joked. 

She laughed and shook her head. “I’m definitely in the right place. What I need is someone to bounce it off of and see if there’s anything decent salvageable from it.” 

“Well I am pretty good at salvaging things,” Duke said amusedly. “Lay it on me.”

“Okay, so you know how I told you guys about the trouble that got rid of all the troubles and the kind of alternate universe that it caused?” 

“Yeah…” Duke said thoughtfully, trying to figure out where she was going with this. “If you’re planning to try and bring it back, might I remind you that the troubled guy who caused it is dead, and even if you find a family member to do it, it would only last as long as they lived and then we’d be right back where we are now and none of us would ever even know the difference. And that’s /if/ William didn’t screw it all up again which we know he would.”

“I know,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean there can’t be another way to get that world.”

“You mean the world where I was a cop? From a long line of cops?” Duke chuckled. “While it’s marginally better than being from a long line of serial killers, it’s still not my cup of tea.”

“Will you just hear me out?” Audrey said with an amused roll of her eyes. Everything always took so much longer with Duke and his rambling. 

“Sure. Go ahead. What other way can we get this utopian version of Haven?” 

“Well…I know that we can’t just use a wish trouble to get rid of it for all the reasons that you said, but what if we can prevent it from ever happening in the first place?” Audrey suggested. 

“How?” Duke asked confusedly. 

“Stuart Mosely. If he could send me back to fifteen ninety before my past self and William started creating the troubles and I could take them out of the equation…”

“Okay, I see what you mean by ‘insane’,” Duke huffed a laugh, but his mind went in a million directions. “And I can think of a thousand problems right off the top of my head.”

“I figured you would. I can think of a lot too. So let’s see if we can figure out a way past any of them,” Audrey said. This was why she was here. To either make it work or be able to throw it away completely. 

“First of all, if you get there via trouble, but then the troubles cease to exist…how would you get back?” 

“I wouldn’t,” Audrey told him. “I know it would be a one-way trip and I’m good with that.” 

Duke filed that away for later discussion if they could get past everything else. “How do you know it wouldn’t create some kind of paradox? I mean, once your method of travel ceased to exist, you wouldn’t have been able to get there so…”

“I don’t,” she shrugged. “But I also don’t believe that creating a paradox would ‘destroy the fabric of the universe’ or anything. I mean, the barn apparently jumped around in time a lot and the world is still standing. I figure worst case scenario, it just won’t work.”

“And then you get stranded in the past for nothing,” Duke pointed out. “And then we’re stuck here trying to fix all this without you.”

“Not exactly. Apparently, William and I are immortal remember? I’ll just have to remember to come back here at some point after I left. And if that’s the case, I’ll have a long time to try and figure out new ways to stop it,” Audrey told him. 

Duke considered that for a moment and couldn’t actually find fault with that part, but there were still other issues. “Let’s say for a moment that you do succeed. You get back to the right time, and manage to take out William and your past self…all the time travel rules say that killing your past self kills your current self.”

“I know,” Audrey nodded. “And if it saves this town from over five hundred years of troubles and countless deaths…I don’t care.” 

“Well I do. And so does Nathan,” Duke pointed out. “You don’t really think he’d let you do this do you?” 

“Which is why I’m not going to tell him,” Audrey said clearly. 

“And me?” Duke asked with a raised eyebrow. 

“You, I trust to accept my decision even if you hate it,” she told him. There was another part of her idea that would make keeping the secret a moot point, but it wasn’t time to bring that part up yet. 

“What makes you think that Stuart Mosely can even send you back that far? We’ve only seen him send people to times when he was alive and his trouble was active,” Duke tried a little more seriously to talk her out of it. 

“I don’t know that either,” she admitted. “But like the other parts, either it works or it doesn’t. If I end up sometime in his lifetime instead, I can just get him to send me back.” 

“But you’re immune to the troubles,” he pointed out the biggest setback. 

“I was able to be sent into the alternate reality,” she reminded him. “As best I can tell, it’s mostly the mental effects that I’m immune to. The things the people create with their minds and the changes that their minds make. I was still able to be hurt by the hailstorm that Marion caused. I was affected by the physical affects of Bobby’s nightmares. Physical things I’m not immune to, so maybe this would be the same.”

“This is completely insane,” Duke argued with a shake of his head. “Hell, for all we know, we’ve had this conversation and done this same thing a hundred times already and they kill you before you can kill them and everything just happens the same way.” 

“I…didn’t even think of that,” Audrey blinked in shock before shaking the idea from her head. It was time for the rest of her plan. “But that’s why…if I do this…I want you to come with me.”

“Do what?!” Duke almost dropped his drink. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I am. That way, if I fail, you can keep going,” she said seriously. 

“Okay, but…why me?” Duke asked confused. “Why not Nathan? You’re just gonna leave him behind, possibly forever?” 

“A lot of reasons,” she told him. That had been the hardest part of her idea to get straight in her head. As soon as she thought of it, Duke had been her only consideration to come along and it took her a while to figure out why. What it was that her subconscious had already figured out that she hadn’t yet. “First of all, if we stop the troubles, but he takes his back with him, I don’t know what will happen. If he will lose it or not, and granted it’s not a trouble that will cost lives, but it could still be passed on to any children and it’s not an easy thing to live with.”

“And I don’t have my trouble anymore,” Duke sighed, realizing that she had a point there. “But still…”

“Plus the fact that Nathan wouldn’t cope as well,” she continued. “You are the most adaptable person I’ve ever known and Nathan is the most rigid. You could easily adapt to life back then, and you’re more of a loner so it would be easier for you to not cause too many waves.” She had no intention of telling him the other reason. Not that it was a reason so much as a fact. The fact that no matter how much she loved Nathan, she loved Duke too. That didn’t change any of the real reasons that she’d already said.

“Are you forgetting the mess I caused when I got sent back to fifty five?” Duke asked incredulously.

“Because you didn’t know what was happening at first and you were trying to get back,” she pointed out. “This time you would know from the start and changing things is the entire point of going in the first place.” 

“And how can you be sure that we won’t make things worse?”

“It’s a risk, sure, but at least it will be a human worse. It won’t be unsolvable curses from other worlds tearing everything apart,” Audrey had already considered that. 

“So, let me get this straight. Your big plan is to throw us both back in time over five hundred years, kill your past self and die on me, then strand me in the past alone to finish cleaning up the mess?” Duke asked in disbelief. 

“Do you have a better idea of how to end the troubles for good? You know that this town can’t go on like this,” Audrey sighed. 

Duke considered things for a long moment, knowing that she was right. They were already coming apart at the seams even before William started escalating things and killing him wasn’t even an option with him and Audrey connected…he held up a hand to stop her saying anything as his mind started a new idea. A long shot, but no less insane than what Audrey had come up with. Audrey could see his mind working, so had no problem keeping quiet while he figured out whatever it was. She had always loved seeing that spark of inspiration in his eyes. It was a long moment before Duke said, “What if there was a way to possibly keep you alive even with your past self dead?” 

“How?” she asked curiously. 

“Well, it’s kind of a long shot, but…William and her are connected right? What if we find out how they did that and then, after we go back, you connect yourself to me too. If we do it while we’re in the past, it might be enough to hold you there even while she dies.”

“Or it could take you with me,” Audrey shook her head. 

“Better than living the rest of my life alone in the distant past,” he pointed out. 

“And defeats the point of you going along in the first place to make sure I succeeded,” Audrey argued. 

“But still gives you backup to make sure you succeed,” Duke told her. “Bottom line, I’m not going with you on a suicide mission. Period. If we don’t find a way to at least give you a /chance/ to survive, I’m out.” 

“And if you were right before and we’ve already done this more than once and failed just because of this reason…”

“We’ll leave ourselves a note,” Duke decided. 

“Where? How?” Audrey asked. “I don’t think the Worldwide Post existed back before the English even settled on this continent.”

“No, of course not,” Duke shook his head. “And anything written on paper would disintegrate after so long anyway. No, I’m thinking of something like carving it on a rock and hiding it somewhere that only I would find it.” 

“Like where?” Audrey asked curiously. 

Duke thought for a minute before it struck him. “Okay, there is an old white ash tree in the woods just south of town. Thing’s almost a thousand years old.”

“Okay, but how would we keep anyone else from finding it? I’m sure other people know that tree,” she pointed out. 

“Sure they do. But no one else knows my system for hiding things,” Duke smirked. 

“Your system?” she asked skeptically. 

“I tell you this, it goes no further,” he said sternly. If they were going to do this, she needed to know anyway. 

“You have my word,” she nodded. 

“Okay, so when I first started stealing things, I came up with this system to hide them. Pick a landmark, mark five paces directly towards the ocean and then twenty one paces south and then bury it.” 

“Why that pattern?” Audrey asked curiously. 

Duke shrugged a little sheepishly. “It wasn’t long after my Dad died and I was on my own trying to survive. At the time, I thought he was lost at sea when his boat went down, hence going towards the sea and then south to signify down. He died on May twenty-first, hence the number of paces.” 

“Oh,” Audrey said with a sympathetic smile. It made perfect sense now. “And you’ve never used the ash tree as a landmark before?”

“Nope. And even if I had, my paces are longer now than they were back then, so it would still bring me to a different spot.” 

“But if we do this, your paces would be the same as they are now,” Audrey nodded in understanding. “Do you think we should go check there now, just to make sure we didn’t leave ourselves a note in the past?” 

“Worth a shot,” Duke shrugged. “You got time for a hunt?” 

“Why not,” Audrey shrugged. This was important enough that she could be a little tired in the morning. 

“Come on then,” Duke grinned, reaching out a hand to help her up as they headed to his truck. 

Once they were on the road, she asked, “Does that mean we’re doing this then?” 

“It means we’re checking to see if we’ve done this before and left ourselves any notes. We’ll see from there,” Duke told her. 

“Fair enough. But you don’t think I’m crazy just for suggesting it though?” 

Duke laughed. “Of course you are. This whole idea is complete insanity. But it might just be insane enough to work.” 

Audrey couldn’t help but chuckle at that as they lapsed into a comfortable silence, both of them turning over more plans and ideas in their heads at the same time as wondering what, if anything, they would find. Once Duke paced out the spot, he started to dig and hit paydirt. “Well I’ll be damned,” Duke said in shock as he pulled the rock out of the hole. He hadn’t honestly expected to find anything.

Audrey came over to kneel next to him and lean over the rock as well while Duke turned it around looking for the message. “W 1st Save A,” she read aloud. 

“Well that’s clear and succinct,” Duke snorted amusedly. “And it means that we’re going with my idea of linking us together.” 

“We don’t know that it’ll work,” Audrey pointed out. 

“Maybe not, but the next note we leave, we’ll tell ourselves what we tried so if it didn’t work we’ll know and since apparently we’re in some sort of loop, we’ll end up here again next time.” 

“I guess,” Audrey sighed, knowing a losing argument when she saw it. “I wonder how much we changed last time,” she pondered as Duke helped her up and they started hiking back towards the truck.

“I doubt we’ll ever know,” Duke shrugged. “All we know right now is that whatever we did last time failed, and I survived while you didn’t.” 

“So we have to leave the note before we go after them, just in case the link just takes you with me,” Audrey realized. “And then I guess dig it back up if we succeed?”

“No point digging it back up. If we succeed, it’ll probably never be found and even if it is, it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. If we didn’t already know what we were planning and why it was here, we wouldn’t have made any sense of that one.” 

“That’s true,” Audrey conceded. “So I guess we’re talking about the linking idea then. How are we supposed to pull that off?” It was a lot easier for her to consider taking the risk when she knew they could get a do-over. “Will it even work since we’re apparently from different worlds? What are the consequences? I mean…what if it’s some kind of marriage or something or…I don’t know.”

“You’re going to have to see if you can wheedle that information from William somehow,” Duke told her. “And even if it is some kind of marriage, clearly there’s nothing /forcing/ us to be together or you would be with William, so it doesn’t really matter. There’s no point really worrying about what ifs when we have to get the information before we can do it anyway.”

“Okay, so I’ll see what I can get from William. He seems willing to wax lyrical about the past, so it shouldn’t be too hard to do,” Audrey agreed. 

“And while you’re doing that, I’ll be getting ready for the trip,” Duke agreed. 

“Getting ready how?” Audrey asked curiously. 

“Well since it’s going to be a one way trip, there’s no point in me keeping all my money. I’m gonna start buying up as much gold as I can so we won’t be broke back then. I’m also going to buy a no-tech sailboat that we can take with us, assuming Stuart can send the boat too of course. It’ll still be too well made to really pass muster, but that part can be explained away. Engines and radios, and motorized equipment, not so much, besides which we won’t even be able to get fuel for the Rouge back then.” 

“That’s smart thinking,” Audrey nodded. “Will you be able to navigate without all the instruments though?” she asked worriedly. Ending up lost at sea wasn’t something that she would find fun in the slightest. 

“Of course,” Duke snorted. “Like I would take the risk of all my equipment going out and not knowing where I am or where I’m going. And yes, I know how to operate sails too in case you haven’t noticed them on the Rouge. No point wasting fuel when there are other ways to get where you’re going.” 

“Okay. That’s good,” Audrey nodded, realizing just how seriously Duke was taking this and feeling a lot better because of it. “What are you going to do with the Rouge and the Gull?” 

“Selling them off would be a red flag that we’re planning something stupid and we’d never get away. I figure whatever note we leave for Nathan, I’ll just tell him they’re his to do with what he wants.”

“That makes sense,” she agreed. She wasn’t going to ask how much money he had otherwise. She was sure that it was enough to at least get them started with the way the economy worked back then and Duke was always good at landing on his feet even if they ran out. She had always suspected that he had a lot more money than he seemed like anyway. She started thinking along the same lines, trying to consider what else they might need to take. “We should consider clothes. The styles and even fabrics back then were a lot different.”

“A lot of that can be passed off as being foreigners,” Duke told her. “But not all of it. A lot of my clothes could work, but we’ll have to see what we can find for you. If nothing else, you can borrow something of mine temporarily and we can claim that you lost all your stuff in a fire or at sea or something and just buy you new stuff back then.” 

“That might be best for most of it, but I still want to try and find at least a couple things before we go. I’d like to avoid civilization until we take care of William and my past self. We don’t want to get spotted. Which is another thing. We have to make sure they don’t see us. Otherwise the next time around, we might not be able to get the information we need so easily if they remember us and suspect what we’re going to do,” Audrey reasoned. 

“Already thought of that, sweetheart,” he chuckled. “Just leave that part to me.” If there was one thing Duke was good at it was going incognito. 

Audrey accepted that at face value. She trusted Duke and if he said that he had it covered, then he did. “What else do we need to take with us?” 

“I plan on taking some guns and ammunition. I know they weren’t actually a thing in that time period so we’ll have to keep them hidden, but they’re too much of an advantage to pass up. Especially since we’ll be travelling with so much gold and there wasn’t exactly a lot of security in those times.” 

“Eventually we’ll run out of ammunition,” Audrey pointed out. 

“I might be able to reuse any spent rounds. I’ll have to see what kind of material is available. Gunpowder will be simple, but the bullet and primer might take some doing. Either way, we shouldn’t use them often, so we should be okay. I’m not sure if they had guns yet in that time period, but if they did, we can get some of those to cover any non-emergency situations and help us conserve.” 

“Yeah, that’s smart,” she nodded. “I’m not sure if they had guns back then or not. We should probably do a little research before we go too. Maybe Vince and Dave would help if you think it’s safe to let them in on this.”

“I don’t know,” Duke said thoughtfully. “We’re talking about changing the past here. Who knows how they’d take that. I think it would be too risky of them trying to stop us or blabbing it to others who would.” 

“True. Maybe I’ll tell them I’m trying to find out more about the origin of the troubles to find a way to stop them and that I need information about the time period to help me know what’s significant?” Audrey suggested. 

“That could work. If you’re careful,” Duke admitted. “But something else we both need to really consider before we get too deep into this…we /are/ talking about changing history. Whether we succeed or fail, there will be consequences. And we’re probably not going to like all of those consequences. Nothing will be the same as we know it. Can you live with that?” 

“I’ve thought of little else since I came up with this hare-brained idea,” Audrey snorted. “But I got a glimpse of a Haven where the troubles never existed. Everyone was better off. And yeah, there will be some people that never exist and some new people that never did before, but overall things will be better.”

“But what if they’re not,” Duke said seriously as they pulled up back at the Gull and headed for the boat to continue the conversation. “What if we end up stepping on some bug that causes America to be invaded by China or something crazy like that?”

“I think it would be more likely that you’d end up king of the pirates and the whole country would be filled with swashbucklers,” she joked, pulling a laugh from Duke before she got more serious. “Fact is though, that we’ve done this before, as evidenced by that rock. And the world is still spinning despite any changes that we made. Granted, I apparently died pretty quick, but I would assume that you lived out your life there without breaking everything. Since we’ve done this before, I would guess we’ve had this conversation before too and thought it was worth it then.”

“Or we just decided it was because we got other messages from our past selves and assumed the same thing,” Duke pointed out. “Maybe the first time we did it things went so bad that we were desperate enough not to have a choice, and we just assumed that it was worth it every time after that.” 

“Okay now I’m getting a headache,” she groaned. “Why do you have to make everything so complicated?” 

“We’re talking about time travel here, Audrey. Did you expect simple?” Duke laughed. 

“I guess not,” she huffed. “I think we should just sleep on that idea for tonight and come back to it tomorrow.” Duke nodded. As long as they weren’t just jumping into this blind which was the reason he brought it up. “Something else to consider though…assuming that we /can/ link us together and we /do/ survive…you realize that could end up making you immortal like I apparently am, right?” 

“Or it could make you mortal like me,” Duke shrugged. “While I wouldn’t be /thrilled/ to be immortal, I could handle it. And clearly we could be killed at least so it’s not like it could never end if it gets to be unbearable.” 

“And I thought I /was/ just as mortal as anyone else until recently, so if that’s the way it goes, it’s not like it would bother me any,” she said amusedly. 

“Okay, so I think we’ve covered everything crucial and we both have our jobs. We’ll talk in the morning and make sure we both still want to do this before I start liquidating my assets, and keep our minds on anything else we might need to bring with us to make sure we don’t forget anything important,” Duke summed up. 

“Sounds like a plan,” Audrey agreed as she got up to go home. She hesitated for a brief moment before dropping a kiss to Duke’s cheek before she left. “Goodnight, Duke.” 

“Night,” Duke replied easily. He had noticed her hesitation and it confused him. She’d done that often enough that he wasn’t sure why she’d hesitated this time. Unless it meant something different than usual. No, he put that thought out of his head. She loved Nathan. Had chosen Nathan. Granted, she was talking about leaving him behind forever and taking Duke with her, but that was just because he was better suited for this mission. That was all. If he let himself forget that, it would just end badly all around. 

Neither of them found sleep quickly or easily that night, Duke in particular. At least Audrey had been considering the idea for a while already. Duke’s first thought was Jennifer. Sure they had broken up, if there was anything to break in the first place. Nothing had ever really been defined between them. They’d had fun and then it just fizzled out. She was never happy with him placing himself in danger and didn’t handle it very well when she got dragged into danger either. He got the feeling that she had mostly just been with him so she could feel like she belonged and he was just there. Now that she had that magical book from her birth parents and had a new puzzle, she had found another way to belong. He didn’t blame her really. He’d been with people in the past for far worse reasons and it wasn’t as though he’d ever been in love with her or anything. Maybe he could have been in time, but he wasn’t anywhere near that point yet. He was pretty sure that Jennifer had picked up on his feelings for Audrey too and that might have been part of the reason they didn’t work, on both their parts. Either way, it was over and he didn’t think that time would fix that, so she wasn’t a reason not to do it. 

After some consideration, Duke realized that there wasn’t really anything substantial that he would miss from here. Not enough to pass up on this opportunity anyway. Nathan was his friend, maybe even his best friend, but Nathan would be helped just as much as anyone if they could succeed in this. Duke had never really been one to get close enough to people that it would hurt too much to lose them. Other than Audrey who had snuck up on him. He was too used to being walked away from to want those kind of ties. He would miss the Rouge most of all, but he would have a new boat and could still live his life on the sea. It wouldn’t be the same, but it would be good enough. There were some modern conveniences he would miss, but he could get along fine without them. 

Phones and electricity were convenient, but not entirely necessary. He could get by without all the fancy gadgets on the boat and he had plenty of experience making his own fishing poles from when he was a kid. He could probably even build his own reel system. He did decide to bring along some heavy-weight fishing line. He wouldn’t be sharing it so no one would have to wonder where it came from and no one would be able to tell the difference from a glance. Modern fishing poles, however, would raise far too many eyebrows. Nets should be simple, clams and oysters were easy to farm, they could buy any other meat and supplies they would need, and if necessary he could hunt himself and Audrey probably wouldn’t be too bad at it either. She was a good shot. It would just mean wasting the ammo, but if it was necessary, oh well. He was sure that even without the fortune they would be bringing with them, he would be able to make a good living. He could essentially do the same as he did here without having to dodge around the law to do it. 

He wondered if Audrey would stick with him after it was over or find a nice town to settle in, but he put that thought out of his mind. It didn’t matter, and if she did settle somewhere, he would make sure she was set for money. He could always make his own, but it wasn’t so easy for women back then. There was a lot they would need to figure out for living after their mission, but all that could wait until their mission was finished.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, once Duke noticed Audrey’s lights on in her apartment, he headed up with coffee as he usually did every so often. Once they were settled on the balcony with their coffee, Duke asked, “So do you still want to do it?” 

“Yeah. You?” she asked, knowing that he would be making a far greater sacrifice than she would. All she had in this world was stopping the troubles. And Nathan, but she was making a better life for him too. Duke had so much more. He had the Gull, the Rouge, a dozen different business deals going on at any given time, some of them even legal. This had been his home for his entire life, even if he hadn’t spent much time here for a while and she was asking him to walk away from it all. 

“Yeah. I’m good with it. Let’s be insane,” he chuckled. 

“Okay, so you take care of a new boat and the gold and I’ll take care of getting the information from William, figuring out how to survive back then, and getting some appropriate clothes, yeah?” 

“That’s the plan,” Duke agreed. 

“Just one thing I thought of last night…what if Stuart can’t send the boat too?” 

“Then we’ll just have to buy one when we get there. I’m sure I’ll have enough,” Duke shrugged. 

“Okay, but I mean…will we just appear in the water loaded down with heavy gold and supplies? We could drown trying to get all that to shore.” 

“I’m pretty sure that boats in those days were the type that could go right up on shore, but either way that’s what I’ll be looking for so if the boat doesn’t go with us, we’ll be close enough to manage. If we time it at high tide, it would be safest, but I would suggest going low tide instead just so that we could take to the water to stay incognito without having to wait for the tide.”

“But then if we end up out a ways…”

“I freedive,” Duke told her. “Worst case scenario I’ll have to take a few trips to drag everything back, but I can hold my breath plenty long enough. You just worry about swimming to shore.” 

“How long /can/ you hold your breath?” she asked curiously, not knowing much about freediving. 

“Fourteen minutes give or take,” Duke shrugged. “Not quite as long in colder water, but I still shouldn’t have any problems.”

“Fourteen minutes?” she asked in shock. “How is that even possible?” 

“World record according to Guinness is just over twenty-three minutes. It takes a lot of time and training, but yeah. It’s possible,” Duke told her. 

“Well maybe if we survive this madness you can teach me how to do it,” she said, seeing how that could definitely come in handy if they were going to be spending a lot of time on the water which she suspected they would be. 

“I’d be happy to,” Duke easily agreed. “But we can still hope the boat comes with us.” 

“Yeah. Definitely hope for that,” she chuckled as Nathan drove up to pick her up. “Remember. Our secret,” she whispered conspiratorially as she set her cup down and went to grab her keys and lock her door. 

“Our secret,” he replied, finishing his coffee just as Nathan came up. “Morning Nate.” 

“Duke,” Nathan nodded companionably. He was beyond any issues with Duke and trusted both him and Audrey enough not to raise any eyebrows about him sharing coffee with her in the mornings. Since he and Audrey had been together, there had even been plenty of mornings that Duke brought them all coffee, so it wasn’t like he just waited for Nathan to not be around. 

Since it was a slow day, Audrey convinced Nathan and Dwight to let her try and track down William to get some information from him. Neither of them liked the idea of her going alone, but once she pointed out that he couldn’t exactly hurt her and was more likely to be receptive of her alone, they agreed to it. With regular check-ins. William ended up being a fount of information, proving to Audrey once and for all that he definitely hadn’t seen them in the past and had no suspicions. He seemed to think that reminiscing would help Audrey to remember Mara. He even told her how they bonded together since apparently it couldn’t be broken anyway so it didn’t hurt anything to tell her. It would still remain to be seen whether it would work with Duke or not since Duke was human, but asking him that would be a little too telling. They would just have to wing it and hope. 

Duke’s day was far more frustrating. Finding a boat that would work for their needs was turning into a needle in a haystack. There were plenty of sailboats with living amenities, but anything with large enough living quarters came with a full kitchen which they couldn’t have back then and electric toilets and showers, not to mention an engine which was apparently standard even if just for emergencies. He could take out the engine himself, but retrofitting the electric components would be a nightmare. It took two days before he found someone who pointed him towards a guy who built historic boats for those who wanted the full history experience. He didn’t have anything that fit their needs, but he had a few that could be modified without too much extra work so they spent quite a bit of time going over the specs Duke wanted to narrow down the best options and Duke had to pay a premium, up front, for all the extra work on top of the cost of the boat to begin with, but he promised it would be ready in a week, so it was worth it. Now that he knew how much he would need on hand, Duke was able to start converting the rest of his cash, including his secret accounts in the Caymans into gold, getting bars in a variety of sizes and blank bullion. He got some of it in jewelry, but not a lot. He wasn’t sure how well that would go over, but it would be easier to carry at least, and might bring in even more than the rest. It was a gamble, but he had always been a gambler. The trick was not to gamble everything. 

Once Audrey had the information she needed from William, she started spending her spare time doing internet research on the late fifteen and early sixteen hundreds. When Nathan noticed, she just told him that she was trying to put some of the intel from William into context. Trying to get into his head better and hopefully find a way to bring him down. Nathan easily accepted that explanation. As did Vince and Dave when she went to them for anything they could tell her. Explaining why she went to a renaissance store in a nearby town and bought some period clothes would have been more difficult, so she did that in secret. Wearing dresses all the time was going to be a pain, but she contented herself with the fact that they’d probably be spending plenty of time on the boat where she dress how she wanted. It wasn’t like Duke would care. She also stocked up on ammo for both of her guns along with a bunch of spare cleaning kits both for her guns and any that Duke brought along, just in case he didn’t think of that. 

They kept each other updated every couple days on their progress. Audrey’s jobs may have been easier, but she also had to keep up appearances at the station, so it balanced out. Duke was in and out of harbor, sometimes having to travel for a day or two to find larger quantities of gold. He also had to leave the business account for the Gull alone since he didn’t want to draw suspicion, plus he wanted Nathan to be able to keep it running if he wanted to. He knew it was probably pointless. Either they would succeed in which case the Gull probably wouldn’t exist and Nathan wouldn’t know any of this anyway or they had no idea what would happen if they failed. Still, when they’d went back to fifty five, it had taken time for the changes to catch up so who knew how long it would be before things changed here. 

The new boat was delivered a day after the week that he was promised, ten days after they’d decided to go to the past, and it required some fast talking to Nathan who wondered why Duke was getting another boat. He claimed that he was retrofitting it for a friend, and Nathan abruptly stopped asking questions. With Duke, friend usually meant things that the cop was better off not knowing lest he have to arrest his friend. The last few days before they planned to leave was spent with Duke stocking the boat with supplies and separating what they would be carrying just in case the boat didn’t go with them. All they would be carrying was two guns each with two boxes of ammo for each gun, one change of clothes in addition to what they were wearing, a large spool of heavy weight fishing line, and as much gold as they could carry. If they survived, gold would be much more useful than more clothes and supplies for making a life for themselves and if they died, none of it would matter anyway. 

The day before they were planning to leave, all hell broke loose when people started dropping like flies. It didn’t take long to learn that William had activated a trouble in a baby that killed people whenever he cried. After a quick conversation with William, who tried to convince her to make a trouble to fix it, she detoured to Stuart Mosely’s house, letting Nathan think that she was still with William. She refused to make a trouble, despite what she told William, so the only option now was to stop it all before it started. When she called Duke, he started making the final preparations, including pulling the boat up on the shoreline in an area that he was pretty sure was unpopulated back then where they had decided to leave from. It wasn’t quite low tide, but it wasn’t particularly high either so it would be okay. 

Audrey explained to Stuart what they needed and why, and learning that it could stop the troubles altogether had him promising to do his best, though he couldn’t make any promises about the boat either. Audrey called Nathan and told him that she was looking for another way and would check in with him in a few hours, stopping by her apartment to leave a long note on her bed along with the envelope that Duke left with her containing his own note and the papers for the Gull and the Rouge signed over to Nathan. She left her door unlocked and the apartment keys on the bed and drove Stuart to the departure point, handing him her car keys as a gift for his help. 

Stuart did his best to stay calm so he didn’t accidentally send them too soon as Duke helped Audrey up onto the deck of the boat and they both loaded themselves down with as many bags as they could carry. Bags which Audrey would drop if they ended up in the water for Duke to retrieve and she was more than glad. All that gold was heavy. Once they were ready, Audrey called to Stuart to go ahead and the next thing she knew Stuart and her car were gone which meant that it worked. And they were still on the boat, so she dropped the bags gratefully. “It worked,” Duke said in surprise. “At least somewhat. Who knows if we’re in the right year, but…”

Audrey smacked him in the chest. “Quit being such a pessimist,” she chided amusedly. “We’ll find a village or something to figure out when we are, until then, just assume it worked.”

“Well the air is much cleaner, so we’re at least far enough in the past that air pollution isn’t a thing,” Duke shrugged, that being as far as he was willing to go. “Why don’t you take the stuff inside and start putting it up while I unfurl the sails and get us moving.” The tide was much higher than when they left, so they weren’t beached at the moment. 

“If we survive this, you’ll have to teach me how to do that too,” she told him as she started hauling bags. There was no point in her putting in the effort to learn right now when they could be dead in a few days. Duke kept them close enough to shore that his telescope could scan for towns and once he saw one, he brought the boat to a stop and dropped anchor. There were a few more things they needed to handle before they hit land. 

He got into the cabin to find Audrey just finishing putting the rest of the gold into the safe in the hidden compartment. “Found a village. Now we just need to get ourselves incognito.”

“How are we going to do that?” she asked curiously. 

“Watch and learn,” Duke smirked, knocking the board off the underside of his bed to show her the small storage area there. He would work on building his escape hatches and other hidden compartments himself, but there were a few that he wanted ready first. “First things first, best I can tell your hair is always different when you come back so if you do get spotted, we don’t want them to think Audrey, so here,” he tossed her a bottle of hair dye. 

“Ugh, do I really have to have black hair?” she groaned. At least Lucy’s was a soft brown that she could live with. 

“Don’t worry. I have blonde in here too so you can get back to your natural color when we’re done,” he assured her.

“Okay. Fine,” she sighed and headed into the bathroom to get started. She did notice that at least it was eco safe and since they didn’t actually have plumbing, everything came from the sea and into the sea, that was a good thing. Something she definitely would have expected Duke to consider. 

Duke was glad that William hadn’t seen that much of him so he didn’t have to disguise himself to such a degree. He just let his hair down and slicked it back and then gave himself a clean shave. He felt awkward without any facial hair, but it would grow back quickly enough once they were done. He was just getting the latex pulled out and ready when Audrey came out of the bathroom with her hair all black. “What’s that?” she asked curiously. 

“This, is the piece de resistance,” he chuckled as he looked in the mirror, carefully placing and shaping it around his jaw and chin to change the shape of his face. That should be more than enough for him not to be recognized. “Come here,” he told her once he was done. 

“That’s pretty obvious,” she pointed out skeptically. 

“It won’t be when I’m done. Trust me,” Duke assured her amusedly as he put some over her nose, reshaping it and then redoing the shape of her face too. “There you go. You’re not particularly attractive. Sorry about that. But you don’t look like /you/ either. Why don’t you go ahead and get changed and then I’ll finish up.” While she was gone, he got out the make-up and blended the foundation in his skin tone over the latex and by the time he was done, she was coming back out of her room. 

“Oh wow. You were right. It’s not noticeable anymore,” she said in awe as she went over to let him do hers. “How do you know how to do this?” 

“Fooling surveillance cameras is a good skill. An old partner of mine taught me years ago. I’m not a professional, of course. I couldn’t make you look like a specific person or anything, but I can make you look not like you,” he explained as he applied the foundation to darken her skin tone a few shades. Make her look less alabaster and more sun-kissed golden. He went all the way down to the collar of the dress, the main reason he wanted her to get dressed first. He skipped her hands, figuring that no one would likely notice. 

Once he was done, she looked in the mirror and gasped. “Wow. I look completely different.” She reached up to touch her face lightly as if to make sure that it was really her. “I’m guessing we’re going with different names just in case too?” 

“You can be Eva and I’ll be Maes. I figure we could pass for Dutch and being foreign would explain any oddities in our clothes and speech patterns,” Duke told her. 

“You really are good at subterfuge,” she laughed. “But what about the accents? I mean, if these are English settlers, they’re probably at least passingly familiar with them.”

“I can do a passable Dutch accent, and remember that with few exceptions, the colonists were lower class in England and thus not likely to have interacted with many foreigners so passable should be good enough,” Duke explained. “You can either not talk or try to imitate me if you think you can manage. You could always be from a different village.” 

“I think I’ll not talk. I’m not the best with accents,” she decided. 

“Fair enough. Oh and given the standards of the times, I hope you won’t mind if I imply that you’re my wife. Otherwise we might end up hung for adultery or something.” 

“Yeah, that’s fine,” she easily agreed. It wasn’t as if they were likely to be challenged in that claim. 

“Any other questions before we head in?” he asked her. 

“I don’t think so, no,” she shook her head and they headed back up top and Duke pulled up the anchor and started to steer them towards the shore. They had been stopped for a couple hours and if anyone had noticed them, they were probably curious. 

Once they got to shore, a few younger men came out to help them and Duke threw them the ropes. Once the bow of the boat was on dry land, he lowered the rope ladder and went down, and then waited for Audrey to help her, partially because it would have been expected and partially because he knew that she wasn’t used to navigating such things in a long dress so she might actually /need/ the help. He wasn’t about to go throwing away the pure gold like confetti so he couldn’t tip the kids that helped with the boat. Not yet at least. He planned to get some coin of the realm during their visit and would give them a little something on the way out. 

The first booth they saw was selling fresh bread, and Duke placed a hand on Audrey’s back to steer her over there. “Hello. You are English yes?” he asked in his barely decent Dutch accent. 

“Yes. We are. Where do you hail from?” the man asked. 

“Holland, though my wife and I enjoy travel,” Duke told him. “Do you accept gold as currency?” he asked pulling two of his bullions from his pocket. 

“Oh yes,” the man told him with wide eyes. “I am unsure if I have enough to change that much though. If you speak to the goldsmith down that way, he can change it for our local coin.” 

“Many thanks,” Duke nodded gratefully. “I wonder, could you tell us the date?” 

“The seventh day of May in the year of our lord fifteen ninety,” he told them. 

Duke nodded at him again and told Audrey, “Come Eva darling. Let us change our coin and then we can get our supplies.” 

Judging by the way the man at the booth looked at the sight of just two of the bullions, Duke pretended that was all he had on him and he changed them both. It wasn’t like they needed much in the way of supplies anyway, they had stocked up for a few days just in case they hadn’t found a town soon enough. Their main purpose here was to learn the date which they’d done. The rest was just pandering to expectations. Once they had a reasonable amount of supplies, they had hardly used anything of the money they’d gotten. The boys that had helped them with the boat, also helped them load the supplies as far as the deck, clearly enraptured by the quality of the boat. Duke gave them each one of the smallest coins and they acted like he’d handed them a fortune before they scrambled down, untied the boat, and pushed them off. 

Duke steered them back South, they way they’d come from. It was far enough from this village that they should be able to stay there privately for a little while. He’d intentionally gone the opposite direction of Haven so no one would notice ‘different people’ with the same boat once they got there. By his reckoning, they were about six miles outside of what they knew as Haven and probably a good deal further from the village that would someday become Haven. Once they were underway, he asked Audrey, “This date is good right?” 

Audrey nodded. “Yeah. William said that they’d arrived at the start of spring and started their ‘experiments’ in midsummer, so we should have time to get to them before they get started. 

“Any idea how to find them?” Duke asked hopefully. 

“If you can navigate the current landscape, then yeah. There should be some kind of pond or something near the Haven lookout where they spent a lot of time according to William,” Audrey explained. 

“I can get us to the lookout, but I don’t know of any pond nearby. Maybe it dried up at some point,” Duke told her. 

“That’s okay. I know the general direction from the lookout. We’ll find it,” Audrey assured him. 

“And then what? We just lay in wait?” Duke asked. 

“That’s what I was thinking, yeah,” she shrugged. “Do you have a better idea?” 

“Not really, no,” he admitted. “But don’t you think we should do the whole linking thing before we go setting up an ambush? You never did tell me how we do that anyway.” 

“Yeah, it’s kinda creepy,” she winced and told him, “It should probably wait until we stop. I’m not sure how it will affect us, you in particular since you’re human.”

“Okay. We’re almost there. You can fill me in on the process while we go.”

“Well…it’s pretty risky and if you’d rather not once you know, that’s okay…”

Duke sighed and rolled his eyes. “Just spit it out.” 

“Well first we need this,” she said, pulling out the ball of black goo from her pocket. The box William gave her with it to start the trouble had been too big to fit when they didn’t know how much they could bring, so she just dumped the ball in her pocket. “I’m not sure what it is, but it’s the substance that they used to create the troubles.”

“And we’re sure that using it isn’t going to re-trouble me?” Duke asked worriedly. 

“No,” Audrey said seriously. “Which is why it’s risky. From what William said, intent is the most important part so since I obviously don’t /want/ to trouble you, it /shouldn’t/, but I can’t be positive.” 

“Well if your intent is what drives it, I’ll take the chance,” Duke told her, fully trusting her not to want to hurt him. 

“/Our/ intent actually. We both have to want, more than anything, to bind ourselves together forever. To not live without each other,” Audrey said nervously. 

“And…is that something that you can do? Want it that much, I mean?” Duke asked, swallowing heavily. “Maybe you should have brought Nathan instead.” But then she had known well before they left what it would take. She had gotten that information from William right after they talked about taking this trip and she still brought him. Unless she just didn’t want it to work. No, just using the trouble making stuff was risky in itself. He was relatively certain that she wouldn’t risk him like that for something that she knew wouldn’t work in the first place. But what did that mean?

“No, I brought the right person. I-it’ll work. From my side at least,” she admitted quietly. “The question is whether you can make it work.”

“I can,” he said just as quietly as she had and her eyes snapped up to meet his. He could see the cautious hope shining there that he was sure was in his own eyes as well. He knew that they should talk about this. Before doing it. It might help. But first he wanted to know what else was involved. “Is that all. Just the black ball of goo and intent?” 

“No,” she shook her head, breaking her eyes away from his. “Then we have to mix our blood together and drink a little bit of it,” she scrunched up her nose distastefully and he had a similar reaction. “And then…we have to kiss. While some of the blood is still in our mouths. Something about mixing our blood and saliva all together.”

“Okay. Kinda gross, but doable. Is that it?” Duke asked her and she nodded. “Okay, let me go get the boat tied off real quick and then we can continue this conversation.” They had just hit the beach, and since they weren’t at a village, Duke would have to do it himself. He hopped down into the water that was just above his knees and walked to shore with the rope, pulling the boat up as far as he could by himself, using a tree for leverage before tying it off. He climbed the rope ladder back up to the boat, not worried about his wet clothes. He took Audrey’s hand and pulled her over to the side of the boat and sat her down. “We should probably talk about the whole intent and wanting it thing first, yeah?” 

“Yeah, probably,” she admitted sheepishly. She knew she should have told him all this sooner, but she had been too afraid of what he would say or worse, that he would back out and make her take Nathan anyway. She didn’t mind if he didn’t want to do it. It would mean that his life wasn’t at risk as much as hers at least. 

Duke sighed, seeing that she wasn’t going to say anything more. “Okay, so I guess I get to make the leap first, huh?” He took a deep breath to steady himself and desperately hoped that he wasn’t going to regret this, but there wasn’t much choice right now. “I…I love you, Audrey. I always have. I’m not going to as more from you than this…just so I can help keep you safe, but…the idea of not having to live without you…that’s definitely something I want…so…yeah,” he ran out of words. Or out of courage. He wasn’t sure which and he couldn’t quite pinpoint what emotion it was shining in her eyes. 

“You stopped in Colorado,” she said questioningly. 

“I-I was just…following your lead…” 

“No,” she shook her head. “I stopped because I could tell you weren’t into it. You were holding back.” 

“I was…scared,” he admitted. “But I didn’t want to stop.” 

“Neither did I,” she made an admission of her own. “I just didn’t want to mess up our friendship by pushing you…I’m sorry…we should have…talked about it or something, but…I love you too, Duke. I have for a long time.”

“But Nathan…” 

“I love Nathan too,” she told him honestly. “And I’ve felt so guilty and horrible for loving you both, but since I thought that you didn’t…care about me that way…it made it easier at least, but…” 

“I should have talked to you too,” Duke said sadly. “I started to once we got back and then we got the call from Nathan and then he died and you were talking about how much you loved him so I just figured that was why we didn’t work. I should have suspected after the way you said goodbye to me before the barn…I /did/ suspect…but then Nathan was so sure about you and him and I wasn’t really that sure so I just went along with him.”

“I thought when you were pushing me towards him, that was your way of telling me that you weren’t an option,” Audrey said softly. 

“It wasn’t,” Duke assured her, reaching a hand to her cheek and tilting her face up to look at him. “God this would be so much easier if you looked like you right now,” he chuckled. 

“It really would,” she huffed amusedly, just as unsettled by his look as he was by hers. She resolved it by meeting his eyes though. They were still the same and he seemed to have come to the same realization because he met her gaze lovingly. “So you’re sure you want to do this?” she asked him one more time. 

“Positive,” he whispered before tearing himself away. “Let me go grab a cup and then we’ll get started.” He was back a moment later with a pewter cup and a few strips of cloth. He took the knife from his belt and rolled up his sleeve, placing a cut on his arm and holding it over the cup for a moment. 

Audrey grabbed a strip of cloth and tied it around his cut before pulling up her own sleeve to do the same. Once he had hers tied off too, she pulled the black ball out again, and took a deep breath before saying, “Last chance to back out.”

“Not a chance,” he smirked, holding his hand up, palm facing her.

She smiled nervously as she crushed the ball in her hand before putting her hand against his and they both closed their eyes and focused on their intent. They could both feel a tugging inside them and hoped that meant it was working. Audrey was the first to open her eyes and took the cup, swirling it around for a minute to make sure the blood was good and mixed before taking a long drink, forcing herself not to gag, and making sure to leave a little bit in her mouth, before handing it to Duke who did the same. As one, they moved forward and when their lips met it was just as amazing as it had been the last time and after a moment the tugging feeling they both felt snapped into place and a spark of electricity crackled between both their hands and their lips causing them to jerk apart. 

“Does that mean it worked?” Duke asked hopefully.

Audrey nodded slowly, looking at their now clean hands. “I think so, yeah.” 

“Should we test it? Just to make sure?” 

Audrey grabbed the knife and made a small cut on the pad of her finger, causing Duke to wince and look at his now bleeding finger. “It worked,” she said more confidently this time. 

“I swear to god woman, the second we finish this, I’m turning you back into you and making up for lost time,” Duke said breathlessly, pulling her in for another excited kiss. 

“I can’t wait,” she grinned as they broke apart. She felt bad for forgetting Nathan so quickly, but it wasn’t like she had much of a choice there. If she did ever see him again, it would be hundreds of years from now.


	3. Chapter 3

Now that they were bonded, Duke and Audrey took a few minutes to eat. Both of them were starving, having not eaten all day. Then made sure their weapons were secure and hidden, Duke’s in the back of his pants under his shirt and Audrey’s under her apron. With the three layers she was wearing to blend in, she wasn’t sure if she could get to it quickly from her thigh holster and the small weapon for her ankle she didn’t trust the range on for this, though she still had it just in case. They packed a bag with supplies, including canteens of water and got ready to go. Once they were off the boat, making sure everything was locked up tight so that no one would be likely to steal it while they were gone, possibly for days, Duke led them first to the ash tree. They stopped to carve a message in the rock and bury it at the right spot before continuing to where the lookout would be in the future. He had to keep reorienting himself since the landscape had changed, but even with that, he knew this area like the back of his hand. While they walked, he asked quietly, “Do you know if your past self and William have bonded yet?” 

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. 

“Okay then we’re going to need to take both of them out just in case,” Duke told her. “Just remember. William first.” He was going to guess that the bonding between them wouldn’t have taken if she was already bonded to William, which was part of the reason he wanted to do it back here, but he couldn’t be sure either way. 

“I’ll take my past self. Just in case doing it myself might buffer me somehow from the effects of her dying,” Audrey told him. 

“You think it would?” Duke asked skeptically. 

“Probably not, but it’s worth a shot, right?” 

“Okay then wait until after you hear my shot before you shoot,” Duke told her and got a nod in return. It was only a few minutes later when Duke held up a hand to stop her. He leaned close and whispered barely loud enough for her to hear it. “The lookout should be just through these trees.” 

She nodded and they split up into opposite directions. Far enough apart that they wouldn’t both be in focus at the same time and at Duke’s signal, they crept quietly through the trees only to find the meadow empty and the large tree in the center still standing rather than just the stump from their time. They headed to the middle and took up positions on the opposite side of the tree. “Which way would Haven be from here?” Audrey asked. 

“That way,” Duke pointed. 

“Then we need to go this way,” she told him jerking her head and they made their way quickly and quietly to the trees. Since she just knew the general direction, finding the pond took a while, and a little bit of backtracking. Once they found it, the area was clear so they set up on the opposite side from the lookout. William had mentioned that the lookout was ‘their spot’ so their best guess was that they would approach the pond from that direction and they didn’t want to be in the way and caught off guard. Once they found a well hidden spot, they pulled out some bread to snack on, keeping one hand on their guns while they ate, and waited in silence. By the time they got into place, the sun was already setting, so they took turns sleeping and keeping watch, glad that neither of them snored loudly enough to be heard over the normal sounds of the forest at night. Not that they slept deep enough to actually snore given the circumstances. 

The next day was just as boring as the night was, and neither of them dared make a sound to speak to each other. They would likely only get one shot at this. Duke was itching like mad as his beard was starting to grow back under his prosthetic skin, but managed to ignore it by sheer willpower. It was almost midnight and the moon was almost full when there was movement in the trees. Audrey nudged Duke who was taking his turn to sleep, and he jerked awake and rolled to his stomach, pulling his gun out in one smooth motion. The pond was small enough that they didn’t need to reposition. They just had to wait for them to get close enough. Audrey forced the blush from her face as they both stripped naked and then got into the water. Duke waited until they were well distracted, mostly on the bank half a pond length towards them before taking his shot, and as soon as Audrey heard it, she took her own. Duke had just enough time to see that both shots were perfect head shots and then see Audrey fall before he knew no more. 

Duke had no idea how long he’d been out, but since the sun was high in the sky, he guessed it had been about twelve hours. Though it could have been a day or more in between and his head was pounding too much to think. The light was definitely not helping as he rolled to his side with a groan. When he bumped into something, his eyes snapped wide open, headache completely ignored as he rushed to Audrey’s side, pushing past the ache in every muscle of his body. “Audrey!” he called worriedly, reaching for a pulse. He should be dead if she was, and that helped him stay relatively calm until he found it and he breathed a sigh of relief when he felt it beating beneath his fingers. It was only a second later that she groaned and started to stir. “Shh, it’s okay sweetheart. Don’t try to move or open your eyes just yet.” If she felt half as bad as he did, she would thank him for that advice. 

“What happened?” she croaked, recognizing his voice and trusting him enough to do as he said.

Duke took a moment to glance through the trees, seeing the two naked bodies still intertwined on the bank of the pond, clearly dead since half their heads were missing and he told her, “Your past self and William are both dead. Judging by the yanking sensation I felt just as I passed out right after you, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that you tried to go with your past self, but the bond with me pulled you back.” That had been exactly what he’d been hoping would happen at least, but if he’d gotten pulled with her it still would have been worth it. 

“How long?” 

“I don’t know. It’s about midday now, but I’m not sure how many days have passed. I don’t feel horribly dehydrated, so probably anywhere between twelve hours and two days and twelve hours.” Audrey slowly opened her eyes and groaned again as the pounding in her head tripled and Duke chuckled at her. “I told you not to open your eyes. If your headache is anything like mine, that’s a very bad idea. Moving is even worse.” 

“You did both,” she pointed out, having seen that much in the brief moment that her eyes were open. 

“Yeah, well, I was worried about you. You don’t have that excuse,” he pointed out amusedly, laying back down next to her, running one hand through her hair as the other one took her hand and threaded their fingers together over her stomach. 

“It’s really over?” she asked hopefully as it hit her. 

“It’s really over,” he assured her, leaning his forehead against her temple. “We did it. And we survived.” 

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” she told him as the tears of relief leaked from her eyes and she turned her head to face him. 

“I’ll always have your back,” he vowed.

“And I’ll always have yours. I love you, Duke.” 

“I love you too, Audrey,” he breathed out, tilting his head forward for a slow kiss before pulling back with a huff. He let go of her hand to reach up and start pulling the prosthetic skin from his face and then hers. They didn’t need it anymore. When she realized what he was doing, she reached up to help him and when they were done, he couldn’t help but laugh. “You look ridiculous.” She had patches of her normal alabaster skin around her jaw and nose and the rest was darker save for the streaks caused by the dew and her tear-tracks. She just stuck out her tongue at him playfully before trying and managing to sit up. 

Duke pulled out a canteen of water and opened it up before handing it to her, taking his turn after her. “We should go take care of the bodies,” she suggested. 

“We don’t have a shovel and there is no way I’m digging a grave by hand. I say we just drag them deeper into the woods and leave them for the animals.” 

Audrey opened her mouth to protest before closing it back as she remembered what time period they were in. There were no such thing as cops and even if anyone found the bodies, they would have no idea how they died. There was no need to go to too much trouble to cover it up. “Okay. That works.” 

They both struggled to their feet and dragged the bodies through the trees away from Haven a good ways before they started back towards the boat, moving quite a bit slower than they had getting there due to the aches in their bodies. Once they got back, Audrey headed immediately for the bath to start filling it up with water straight from the ocean below them. It didn’t dawn on her until halfway through that there was no hot water and she realized that she was doomed to cold baths for the foreseeable future and she sighed heavily. The tub was almost full when Duke came to her rescue with a large cauldron of boiling water that he poured in and then swished around with his hand, before motioning her towards it and handing her the blonde hair dye. 

Part of Duke wanted nothing more than to join her in the tub that he made sure was big enough for two, if only barely, but he knew that they were both too tired and sore right now for where that would lead. He wanted their first time to be perfect, even if he did have to wait until tomorrow for it. She was thinking the same thing and resisted the urge to invite him in. That and it would be harder to recolor her hair that way. She got in with a happy sigh. It wasn’t quite as warm as she would have liked it, but it was warm enough to be comfortable. The first thing she did was sink below the water to wash all the makeup off her face and neck and give her hair a thorough rinse. She had learned through her research that bathing wasn’t a big thing in this time period and soap was only used for laundry even when they did bathe. She also read that seawater was a natural cleanser so she should be okay. Shampoo was a different story though. Until all the color grew out of her hair, that much would be necessary. 

Once she was as clean as she could get herself without soap, she got out of the tub and wrapped herself in a towel, letting Duke have a turn before the water got cold as she started putting the dye in her hair. She had to let it sit for much longer since she was going from dark to light so she set to straightening up and unpacking their bags while she waited. When she went back to the bathroom, Duke was out of the tub and dried off with his own towel wrapped around his waist. The tub was drained and he was wiping it down with a damp cloth. When she looked at him curiously he explained, “The salt in the water can corrode the tub if it’s left too long and too often.” 

“That makes sense. I’ll remember that,” she promised, fully intending to do her part with the cleaning. She leaned over the sink to rinse the color out of her hair and then took the rag from him to wipe that down too. She huffed when she looked in the mirror. “It’s still too dark.” 

“Only a little bit,” he assured her. “It’ll grow back right.” It was about halfway between Audrey’s normal blonde and Lexi’s dirty blonde right now. It was close enough for him. 

“I know. I’ll get used to it,” she sighed as they headed out of the bathroom. She headed into her room to change into a nightdress and met Duke in the stateroom as he was putting the cauldron that he’d boiled the water in away. 

Audrey bit her lip nervously, trying to decide if she should ask the question that was on her mind or not, but Duke beat her to the punch. “You don’t have to sleep in the other bedroom if you don’t want to.” 

She smiled brightly and moved over to wrap her arms around his neck, leaning up for a kiss which he gladly gave. “Then I won’t,” she said simply. “But I’m too sore for anything but sleep tonight.” 

“Me too,” he agreed as they headed to bed, falling asleep wrapped in each other’s arms. 

The next morning, Audrey woke up to the smell of a nice breakfast and smiled brightly as she got up and headed for the stateroom where the combined living area and kitchen were. “Is that coffee I smell?” she asked excitedly. At the market when they first got here, she was disappointed to find that there was no coffee here and resigned herself to waiting however long it took to get here. 

“Sure is,” Duke smirked. “I didn’t bring much, but it’s been a rough few days so I figured we deserve a treat.” 

“I knew there was a reason I loved you,” she joked, giving him a kiss on her way to the table for the steaming cup. 

“I didn’t bring any eggs, but the next time we resupply, we can grab some. I also didn’t think to bring a waffle iron, so we’re stuck with pancakes for now,” Duke said apologetically. 

Audrey felt the pang of missing Nathan at the mention of pancakes, but pushed it aside. She knew that Duke wouldn’t fault her for it, but she still felt a little guilty, despite the fact that she knew that he would never have known her now that the future was changed. She didn’t regret a thing though. “At least you got bacon,” she settled for saying. It had been the most expensive thing they’d bought at the market, but it was worth it. 

After a hearty breakfast, they got started on making up for that lost time and spent the rest of the morning back in bed. They had to wait for the tide to come in anyway before they could go anywhere. Duke cooked up some fish for lunch and by the time they were done eating, they were floating again and Duke took them back out onto the water. When Audrey joined him on the deck, he started the conversation that they needed to have. “So we should decide what we’re going to do now.”

“How do you mean?” she asked curiously. 

“Well we have a few options. We can either find a town to settle in, Haven even if you want, and use that as our home base, though I’ll want to do some shipping or fishing or both. Or we can just live at sea and stop long enough to resupply every so often,” Duke told her. 

“What would you rather do?” she asked. 

“I’m good either way, but living at sea would cause the fewest ripples in the timeline now that the big problem is solved,” he pointed out.

“I was thinking the same thing. At least until we know whether or not we’re immortal and not aging anymore. If we are immortal, maybe we can settle here and there for a few years at a time every once in a while until time catches up. As much as I love the ocean, I could use a break sometimes if it’s going to be hundreds of years.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Duke agreed. “We’re going to need to stop and get set up for longer periods at sea though. You want to check out fledgling Haven?” 

Audrey laughed at his wording and nodded. “That sounds like fun.” 

It was nightfall by the time they got close and rather than head in at night when everything would be closed anyway, he just dropped anchor and they went to bed, waiting until morning to hit the town. This time, Duke had the appropriate coin to tip the kids who helped bring the boat in and they ventured deeper into the village than they did last time. They didn’t pretend to be foreign this time or use fake names, so it was a much more relaxed trip. The first thing they bought was two sixty gallon barrels to store fresh water in for drinking and a little bit for cooking, though they would mostly be using the seawater for flavor. There wasn’t much point in adding salt when they had ready access to water that already had it. 

Duke hired a few guys to help him fill and load the barrels while Audrey did some more shopping. She would have helped with the water, but she knew that a woman doing that kind of heavy work would raise more than a few eyebrows and they were trying to blend in. Since they hadn’t brought too many clothes and even the ‘period’ clothing was different enough to draw looks, probably due to the better manufacturing quality, she bought both her and Duke a few new outfits. She also bought a sewing kit and a lot of fabric, fully intending to teach herself how to sew. There was no such thing as pants for women and she didn’t want to be stuck in dresses all the time, not to mention that she would need something to do with her time. She could live without television and radio but there weren’t any books readily available either. She was sure that there were in other parts of the world and maybe they would find their way to some of those places in time. She also planned to have Duke teach her everything he knew about boats, fishing, diving, and anything else she could learn. Most of her skills weren’t going to be very useful for a few hundred years after all. 

Another thing she bought was a good selection of alcohol which was set aside to be taken to the boat once Duke got back with his hired help. She bought laundry soap and a washing board and basin since Duke had left his behind on the Cape Rouge, and then wandered around grabbing anything else that caught her eye and could be useful, including a waffle iron. They had most everything else necessary for a kitchen as far as she knew. At least all that would be necessary for only two people. When Duke got back they got more into choosing foods, staples, and spices since he was the cook between them, not that they could let these people know that. Storing meat was going to be an issue so they only got enough for a few weeks and after that they would rely on the fish they caught until their next refueling stop. Flour, sugar, and butter they didn’t limit as much, but milk and eggs they did. It ended up taking them the whole day to get stocked and loaded and they both felt more comfortable taking the boat out on the water to sleep rather than staying on the beach. 

Now that they knew they were going to survive, talk turned to naming the boat. Since he had bought her new, she didn’t come with a name and Duke hadn’t seen much sense in naming her when they could be dead before they really got to set sail. They had yet to be more than a few hundred yards off the coast, but he insisted on a name before they went any further. After some discussion, they decided to honor their old lives and name it after the restaurant that would probably never be and the afternoon found Duke hanging on the rope ladder above the water painting Grey Gull on the hull of the boat and they gave a toast to the newly christened boat over dinner which they ate on the deck. It was a nice summer evening, after all and no one liked being cooped up inside all the time. 

They had enough fresh drinking water to stay on the boat for months so that’s what they did. In that time, Audrey became an able fisherman, could pilot the boat in a pinch, but still had to depend on Duke for navigation. That would take a lot more time and practice. She had also learned how to make a basic sewing stitch, taught to her by Duke of all people, but the most he could do was stitch up a tear. When it came to making actual clothes, he was no better than she was, but they both enjoyed laughing at her attempts. In a way that would have shocked most people of the time, they shared most of the chores on the boat from the fishing to the cleaning, even if they had to play the traditional gender roles in public. They didn’t want to start ‘breaking butterfly wings’ by shaking up the status quo and starting a ‘revolution’ too soon. 

Over the next few decades they only stopped to resupply every three months and never spent a night on land. They travelled all over the world, meeting more hostility in some places than others. They claimed their country of birth as England since they were too old at first to have been born in the recently settled colonies, but for anyone who asked, they said that they didn’t claim a country and only lived on the water. That reduced a lot of the hostility towards the ‘Englishmen’ but not all of it. Duke’s talent with languages came in handy during their travels and Audrey had picked up quite a bit herself. During that time, they learned that they weren’t aging which was a plus when they ended up passing through ‘plague zones’ as Audrey called them. They were apparently immune to illnesses as well with their immortality. 

They had more than a few run-ins with storms, but Duke was old hat with that and got them through. Not always easily, but they managed. Making repairs on the water without the tools or equipment they were used to required a steep learning curve, but they both learned enough to survive and keep the boat on the water. Any out of water maintenance, Duke had to do himself for appearances sake, but anything that could be done on the water, Audrey helped with. Duke did end up getting his escape hatches and secret passages built over time which came in handy the first time they were boarded by pirates in sixteen thirty. Between those and the very much ahead of their time weapons that Duke and Audrey had, the pirates were easily taken down without injury. While Duke did resist the urge to take on the rest of the pirates and take their boat, he didn’t hesitate to strip the boarders of anything of value to add to their safe before rolling them into the water. For the next few weeks, Audrey kept snickering at him and muttering “Pirate King,” under her breath which he found more than a little amusing. 

It wasn’t long after that incident when they ‘settled down’ in a small coastal village in what would one day become Georgia. Audrey soon found that she missed the water though. She had found a home there just as much as Duke had and only lasted two years before she wanted back to the boat. It didn’t help that they had to be so careful not to make waves since they were out of their own time. While they had been staying in the village they managed to do a full overhaul of the Grey Gull and there wasn’t much of the original boat left by the time she was back on the water. Over the next couple hundred years, they had a few more run-ins with pirates which they always came out on top during thanks the their secret advantages and still hadn’t even been through a fraction of their ammunition, but eventually the pirate age died out. 

They avoided the Atlantic ocean altogether during the Revolutionary war, not wanting to get caught up in it if they could avoid it. There were other times and other places that they avoided when things got heavy and they avoided the east coast of America during the civil war as well. Both Audrey and Duke were more than glad when books became easier to come by and they had a small library in the stateroom in short order. Audrey also picked up a variety of musical instruments in different ports of call, some of them Duke learned to play too. Every few decades they would park it in a town somewhere and pull the boat out of the water to do a full overhaul and replace almost everything. They managed to keep her going up until nineteen sixty seven when Duke was practically salivating waiting for the Cape Rouge to come off the production line. They sold off a good portion of their gold to get her even after selling the Grey Gull, but they had still barely made a dent in what they had available. 

By that time, Audrey had lost all desire to protest any less than illegal activity by Duke who had a lot more freedom to rejoin the smuggling trade now that he had his baby back and wasn’t relying on sails all the time. They had considered upgrading many times once motorized boats started coming onto the scene, but Duke had wanted to wait for this specific one and Audrey gladly indulged him. She did convince him to keep it to a minimum until they caught back up with their own time though so as not to make waves. Once he had the Rouge back, they did head to Haven though to check up on things and they found it very similar to the Haven that started this whole idea. Roy Crocker was even the Chief of police which Audrey found more than a little amusing. They stayed there for a few months just taking in the wonder of a Haven that had never experienced the troubles before they were back on the water. 

Duke pitched the idea of returning to Haven once they reached the time they’d left, but Audrey sadly had to put paid to that idea. As long as there was another version of him running around town, they had to stay away. It bugged Duke that they couldn’t enjoy the fruits of their labor, but he couldn’t deny that she was right so they waited another fifty years before returning to their home. Once time caught back up with itself they sold off all their gold and put it back into currency, most of it hidden in the Caymans the same way Duke had it set up before. Whenever they were in a place where they had internet access, Audrey kept tabs on all their old friends from their Haven. Unlike the alternate reality Haven, Nathan wasn’t a Hansen, but was a Wuornos. Max Hansen, even without his trouble, was still a menace to society and had been locked up and killed in prison and Garland Wuornos had adopted his stepson. 

Nathan and the other Duke Crocker from the correct timeline were both detectives and were partners and best friends according to their social media. Nathan was married and had two kids, but Duke never married or had any children. The Duke with Audrey told her that it was because she was the only one for him so that other Duke was just out of luck. Vince and Dave ran the Haven Herald up until their deaths fifteen and twenty years after the first Duke and Audrey left. Once they did make it back to Haven, they quickly found that it wasn’t home anymore. Their home was on the water…with regular stops anywhere they had ‘business’ to conduct.


End file.
